There is much frustration driving this article. What is saddest about the entire Palestine-Israel mess is that everyone is right, and everyone is wrong. Everyone shares equal blame that the many opportunities for peaceful solutions have been squandered, and that so many more opportunities are yet be squandered.

Much of what Cohen says in this very well-written opinion on the war in Gaza has been said before. However, there are some key insights i had not read elsewhere, such as hi contention that Israeli's are deluding themselves into thinking that Hamas is going away.

a cry of despair by this writer over hopes of peace between israel and gaza. her points out that gaza has been offered nothing but sticks, with no carrots ( one, economic activity which neither israel, nor u.s. nor the world has provided might have helped ), a strategy without hope for a future.

It's one more 'insightful' piece on the conflict, emphasizing the irrational polarized thinking that's gotten everyone to this point.

Outstanding summary by Roger Cohen of the strategic idiocy of Israel in smashing Gaza in an effort to destroy Hamas.

MY God! Never in my lifetime did I think of concentration camps and the word Holocaust, and not associate it with Israel. I Had never, before this great article, heard the phrase "Only the dead vote in Jerusalem"